For many years, safety aspects of car signalization on the roads have been subject to efforts of improvement. Better light bulbs and Center High Mounted Stop Lamps (CHMSL) are only the most recent solutions that are continuously improving the signaling of the vehicle on overpopulated roads nowadays.
It is known that the time a driver's leg requires to move from accelerator to brake pedal in imminent, sudden braking situations is 0.2-0.3 seconds. Efforts have been made in the art to illuminate the brake lights before the brake pedal has been actually activated, thus alerting the driver of the vehicle immediately behind of the imminent change in speed of the car in front of him.
Inertial signal-generating devices are also known in the art, and generally comprise an element which is free to bend under inertial forces, and the bending of which causes a change in electrical properties of this element, or of an additional member connected thereto, which is in turn connected to electrical connections. The change in electrical properties, e.g., conductivity, causes a change in the electrical signal emitted by the signal-generating device, thereby alerting receiving means, which receive this signal and detect the change, that inertial forces have been applied to the signal-generating device.
Such signal-generating devices have a variety of applications, for instance, in crash analysis, or in industry to analyze different dynamical behaviors of different moving parts, and for many other purposes which will be appreciated by the skilled engineer. A particular use is that described in which the inertial signal-generating device is exploited in a brake lights activation system, to activate a circuit which causes the brake lights to light up when the acceleration pedal is suddenly released, and before the brake is actually actuated. In this particular use, the inertial signal-generating device detects the sudden and abrupt release of the pedal, and generates a signal which is analyzed by appropriate electronic circuits.